The present invention generally relates to a telephone system for facilitating dialing telephone numbers containing a large number of digits. More particularly, the present invention relates to a telephone dialing method and system which can be used between the telephone and the telephone access line for automatically inserting an alternate inter-exchange carrier for long distance and/or international telephone calls.
Since the breakup of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, a plurality of local and long distance carriers have emerged. The consumer has an opportunity to choose a primary long distance telephone carrier. This means that whenever a long distance telephone call is made from a subscriber's telephone, the call is automatically routed to the selected primary long distance carrier.
The long distance telephone business is a highly profitable business, and such profits will increase generally as the number of subscribers utilizing the particular long distance carrier increases. There is fierce competition among the various long distance carriers in an attempt to obtain subscribers.
Because of such competition, different long distance carriers provide different telephone rates depending on the time of call, the area being called, and even the person being called. Therefore, it is possible that a subscriber may choose one primary long distance carrier for most telephone calls. However, for other telephone calls, the subscriber may prefer to utilize a different long distance carrier. As noted above, this might depend on the time, the duration or the location of the called party.
It is possible for a subscriber to change primary long distance carriers. However, this requires contacting the various carriers and making arrangements for such changes. Quite often, some fees are involved when such changes are made.
In addition to the number of long distance carriers that have been licensed to provide long distance telephone service, there are telephone wholesalers also available for different types of subscribers. The telephone wholesalers may purchase time in large blocks from one or more of the licensed long distance carriers. The wholesaler then resells the time to individual subscribers. Since the reseller can guarantee a large amount of usage of the long distance telephone service, the reseller can generally obtain much better telephone rates than an individual subscriber for making the long distance telephone calls. Thus, the reseller can then pass on some of the savings to individual subscribers.
In order to make use of the reseller's equipment, or to use a different long distance carrier from the primary carrier, it is necessary for the telephone caller to first dial an access code into the dialing string. The access code is generally in the form of "101-XXXX" or "10-XXX," but because the "101-XXXX" format appears to be more likely to be used and for purposes of simplicity, the following description will be provided in terms of the "101-XXXX" format, even though the present invention will accommodate any format of access code. This is also called the "Casual Calling" access code.
As is known, to generally dial a local telephone number, one must dial seven digits. If a long distance telephone call is being made, the subscriber must dial a "1" followed by the area code, followed by the seven digits in the dialing string. Furthermore, if an international call is being made, the subscriber must generally first dial "011" in order to set up the equipment for the international telephone call. The present invention makes use of these features for selectively routing dialed telephone calls.